How To Integrate TOK Into Lessons

By Charlotte Nicholas

It was really great to have the opportunity on INSET Day to speak a little more about TOK and critical thinking in our subjects. More often than not we are ‘doing TOK’ in our lessons but it would be fantastic if we were more explicit in our practice. This blog post aims to give you some suggestions on how to bring TOK into your teaching; from Year 7, all the way through to Year 13.

In order to ensure that our inclusion of TOK is consistent, It is crucial for us to have a shared knowledge of what TOK is. Below is a screenshot of the TOK specification. One suggestion of how to fit TOK into your lessons could be to use the It knowledge framework as a way of framing questions, for instance; which perspectives are involved in the arts? Are some perspectives more valid than others? Why? What methods do mathematicians use to make mathematical claims? What is the scope of language, can it be independent of knowledge?

One misconception with TOK is that it is the same as philosophy or ethics as this is included in the knowledge framework. It is important not to fall into the TOK trap of conflating these different subjects (although they are closely related). An ethical question may consider what is right or wrong or attempt to make moral judgements whereas TOK would consider which approaches might exist towards an ethical dilemma, what knowledge has informed these approaches and the role that knowledge plays in people’s perspectives and actions towards ethical issues E.g. As knowers, do we have a moral duty to examine our own biases and assumptions? Are there situations where ignorance/lack of knowledge is an excuse for unethical behaviour? It would be great to see more of us bringing TOK into our classrooms. Below are some suggestions of what you could do to include it more explicitly and meaningfully. I look forward to hearing from you about how this goes and how students respond!

• Apply Michael’s idea of bringing in a current affairs / news article into your lesson and getting students to approach it from a TOK lens. Please see Michael’s slides here.

• Apply Michael’s idea of starting with a misconception / finding out what students already know. E.g. What moral values do you think scientists have?

• Ask students provoking questions using the TOK concepts; certainty, truth, explanation, culture, evidence, justification, power, perspective, values, objectivity, responsibility and interpretation. How has your culture affected your perspective? Do you think the fact we have discussed is objective? Is religion the only place that faith plays a role?

• Use objects in your teaching (students use objects in their TOK exhibition). For instance, get students to consider how objects link to your specific discipline and the knowledge within it. What can this phrenological skull tell you about historical knowledge and scientific knowledge?

• Consider the content you are teaching from a different perspective -- How about if we asked the same question to an indigenous community? How about if we asked this question to a religious / non-religious group?

• Encourage students to consider themselves as ‘knowers’ and use phrases like ‘experts’ ‘ ‘community of knowers’ etc.

• Subscribe to Michael’s newsletter at Theoryofknowledge.net and frame your thinking in a TOK way more frequently.

• Mention TOK or critical thinking explicitly and use the TOK logo whenever you are doing some TOK thinking to get students to think explicitly about it.

• Discuss the methodology in your subjects with students to help them understand how knowledge is formed in your area. E.g. Why do historians’ views change over time? How do scientists ensure their work is accurate? Is only the artist's intended interpretation of their art the only valid view?

• Stay up to date with the yearly TOK essay titles (see below) -- discuss with students how you would approach them from your perspective / with your expertise.

Finally, it would be excellent to welcome staff to the TOK Exhibition event on Wednesday 22nd June 5pm-7pm. This will be a fantastic opportunity to learn more about what students have been doing in TOK and in order to probe their thinking further with your expertise. Thanks for reading and happy TOK’ing!

CPD Reflections: Teaching An Adaptive Curriculum

By Izzy Hilliard

Back in the heady days of early 2019, the English department received training from the English and Media Centre, a developmental centre that encourages best pedagogical practices and innovative approaches to teaching English. At the EMC, they value raising attainment but also want to offer approaches that allow students to become confident, articulate and critical thinkers and learners. On their website they recognise that some of their CPD may be viewed as “radical,” but they want English teachers to begin “taking risks that challenge both themselves and students.” Fast forward two and a half years and we have gone through two school closures, red tape, Chromebook use, no sharing of books, no sharing of paper- and we have done so resiliently whilst still putting the students and their education first. However, as we re-enter the school climate we once again have to be considering how we can push our curriculum forward, even if that entails “praiseworthy failure.” Whilst students at Key Stage 4 are constricted by government-dictated text choices and exams, Key Stage 3 is an opportunity to have freedom with the texts we choose and the pedagogy we use to educate. This aligns with the idea of an “adaptive curriculum,” which the EMC defines as “ a single curriculum which all students in a given class can access if it is suitably adapted.”

The main three ideas that the EMC promotes are:

• Choice- the EMC believes that students should have a stake in what they are learning and to do this they have to have some say in the texts that they study and the form they write responses in.
• Connectivity- Texts that students study should connect with students’ own lives and experiences including prior reading and viewing.
• Cognition- Students should want to engage in deep thinking that relies primarily on self-generated ideas rather than ideas they have absorbed from the teacher.

In regards to these three ideas, the EMC promotes what they call, “Low Threshold, High Ceiling,” which is particularly pertinent in Westminster Academy due to having mixed-ability classroom settings. They referenced the study called Closing the Reading Gap which says that it is wasteful of learning time to have a novel, poetry anthology or play that students cannot access. The training established that differentiation is vital at the point of access for all students. Subsequently, to ensure that the high ceiling is met, endpoints could also be adapted and changed for different students. Whilst no endpoints should establish low expectations all students need to be appropriately challenged depending on their ability. What does the English Department do already? Already the English department uses regular discussion, self and peer assessment. Furthermore, post our training in 2019 we have now started creating a novel “agenda.” This is when students are able to see snippets from the novel they will be reading and create an agenda about the aspects they find interesting eg The theme of violence across the snippets; the narrative voice is engaging because …. Etc. We then refer to this agenda for the rest of the term. It allows students to take ownership over what we have read and what we will be reading as well as anchoring their study of the novel. They have directed the teaching rather than just been told what is and is not significant. Why does an EMC approach matter at Westminster Academy? As Westminster Academy attempts to promote the IB in younger years, I believe that the EMC approach speaks to many of the IB Learner Profile characteristics. By increasing their independence from a young age with self-directed learning and choice we are asking our students to be inquirers and risk-taking. Subsequently, the pedagogical approaches, promoting Pie Corbett’s “Talk” allows students to practise and perfect their open-mindedness and the way they communicate. How does this impact me and my practice? After the three sessions from the EMC I reflected on the changes I wanted to make in my own pedagogy.

• How can I adapt endpoints of a unit for different students without changing my expectations of the quality of work?
• How can I encourage my students to take accountability for their own learning and curriculum?
• How can I ensure that my students use “self-assessment time” to make meaningful progress?
• How can I embed the IB Learner profile into an EMC approach within the English department?
• What texts should I be teaching to ensure that I have a “Low Threshold, High Ceiling” curriculum
• How can I establish high-quality differentiation throughout the curriculum so that no student cannot access any of the low threshold texts?

How Can The IB Learner Profile Characteristics Be Developed Across A School?

By Paul Wood

I mentioned during INSET that, as a whole, WA didn't look or feel to me like an IB school during the pandemic-constrained months from January to July. Our excellent IB DP and CP programmes have, in many ways, continued to exemplify what is great about the IB, even during lockdowns and on-site constraints. However, those sixth form programmes occupy a relatively small physical space at WA and involve only ~13% of our students. So I'm wondering about the extent to which the IB influences our students' experiences in Y7-11 and that's something for us all to think about and discuss in the coming months. I appreciate Holly inviting me to expand on that observation via this blog post about my previous experiences with the IB Learner Profile. I also mentioned during that same INSET talk that I do understand that what I saw and felt last year was constrained by COVID and I want to emphasise that again here. Indeed, it’s been fascinating and enjoyable these past two weeks to see the variations that are now emerging in the students’ classroom experiences and I certainly believe I’m seeing much more of the "real" WA. As you hopefully all know, the IB learner profile (LP) comprises ten characteristics that will be familiar to, and demonstrated by, all students who experience IB programmes:

• Inquirers
• Knowledgeable
• Thinkers
• Communicators
• Principled
• Open-minded
• Caring
• Risk-takers
• Balanced
• Reflective
  

As with any other desired learning outcomes of a school, it is not desirable (or possible!) for every teacher to aim to develop all of these characteristics in every lesson! Rather, IB schools should be able to point to purposeful opportunities - in lessons and in extra-curricular activities - via which students can increase their understanding and demonstration of the LP over the course of their school careers, so that by the time the students leave the school at Y11 or Y13, they are able to speak reflectively about each of the characteristics in a sincere manner. Lessons involve reference to, and discussion of, the LP terms as an introduction to related learning activities. There is little value in the LP existing only as a poster on a classroom wall. And there is little value in a teacher discussing with students what it means to be "risk taker" at school, if students are never given opportunities to take intellectual and academic risks, in a supportive environment that recognises "praise-worthy failure". In my experience, schools achieve purposeful development of the LP via skilful and coordinated cross-curricular and extra-curricular planning. I've seen that to be the case no matter what the pre-CP/DP academic programme. In other words, the LP can be woven into the planning of KS3/KS4, of IB Middle Years Programme, and of American standards-based curricula. However, without that coordinated, scaffolded curriculum planning, the LP will develop in ad hoc, coincidental ways at best. Where I've seen this Y7-11 planning work best (including effective alignment with sixth form curricula), the academic curriculum is planned in teams, both horizontal and vertical, working under the guidance of a single schoolwide curriculum coordinator who ensures everyone is "rowing in the same direction". Those teams meet before, during, and after discrete periods of learning ("units" or whatever they might be called). If the planning and teaching are well-coordinated, any student could move seamlessly from one class of a course to another, without noticing a difference in outcomes. This is not to suggest that all students should do the same activities at the same time with the different teachers of the course. Rather, the teachers agree on those outcomes and the related common assessment tasks, and then the teachers help every student demonstrate their learning in the common assessment task, even if they complete different activities along the way. That's the essence of individualised learning and it requires skilful classroom facilitation to complement the coordinated curriculum planning. (And I'll emphasise that it does not need to happen in every lesson every day - it needs to be an appropriate part of a thoughtfully coordinated curriculum). In summary, I've seen the LP characteristics best developed in Y7-11 in schools that have (i) coordinated, schoolwide curriculum planning and review, (ii) purposeful but authentic reference to the LP characteristics sprinkled throughout that curriculum so that they all received attention over the course of the five or seven years, and (iii) classroom teaching that, over time, helps students understand and demonstrate the LP characteristics by connecting them to subject area learning.